BBC Launch iPlayer App In 11 European Countries
BBC have launched an app that brings UK TV shows to the Apple iPad in 11 European countries. Unfortunately, the USA, Canada and Australia are not among the first batch of countries that will get the global iPlayer app, which brings a curated and archived set of BBC content to iPad owners.
The iPlayer app is free to download and install but to watch BBC shows users will have to fork out €6.99 a month ($10), or €49.99 ($72) for an annual subscription.
The initial launch will only work if you live in Western Europe: “Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland”. Plans are in place to bring the global iPlayer to the USA, Canada and Australia by the end of the year.
The BBC iPlayer app has some differences from other iPad video apps like Hulu Plus or ABC’s video player. Notably, it can stream shows over 3G connections as well as Wi Fi, and users will be able to download and store shows for viewing while offline.
“When we were doing our user testing, the use case was picking six shows before going on a long journey, and leaving them to download to the iPad overnight,” Mark Smith, the global iPlayer launch director said.
“The way the iPad works, though, is it hibernates and stops you from doing that: you wake up the next morning and only half a show has downloaded. We have managed to override that functionality, and Apple are comfortable with us doing that.”
Subscribers are not going to be able to access to the entire BBC’s on air offerings, however. BBC Worldwide is said to have hired a team of editors to “curate” the content on the iPlayer, picking which shows to put on the app.
It also give them to go beyond the usual genre and title browsing by adding themed collections on subjects and events. As an example, the long running sci-fi show Doctor Who, collections surrounding specific Doctors will be available.
“This is not a catch up service: this is a video on demand service,” BBC managing director Luke Bradley Jones said. “We will have content from the last month, but also the best from the catalogue stretching back 50 to 60 years.”
The content at launch is going be the same accross all the 11 countries, but the BBC has the ability to change the content of the app to allow us to meet the demands of each region/country.
This will likely factor more highly in the introduction of the global iPlayer to the USA, where licensing rights for TV shows can be more very complicated. According to reports, once the BBC works out the rights issues, the iPlayer content shouldn’t affect the company’s offerings in iTunes, Hulu, and Netflix.
“We see the global BBC iPlayer very much as another ‘Channel’ operating in Western Europe,” BBC spokesman Alex Fulton said. “By adopting windowing strategies for our content, we are able to ensure that our broadcast partners and Channels around the world are able to entertain their audiences with our shows.”
The subscription price is interesting because it is lower than the BBC license fee in the UK, making it cheaper to watch the BBC abroad. This may have some residents up in arms.
Latest TV searches:
iplayer usa, bbc iplayer global launch, watch bbc iplayer abroad on ipad, free app for watching tv abroad, watch uk tv on ipad in germany, get free british tv in europe ipad app, ipad app for uk tv abroad, samsung smart tv app bbc iplayer abroad, stream television in europe on ipad, tv app that works in europeRelated News:
- BBC iPlayer App For iPad Tablet And iPhone Gets Closer To Launch
- The iPad Is The Device For BBC iPlayer in the US
- BBC iPlayer Plans International Launch Next Year
- BBC iPlayer Stats Show Rise In Live TV Streaming
- iPlayer Comes To More Connected TV Devices
[...] which is exclusive to Apple’s iPad tablet computer, has already been launched in 11 European countries following the product’s release in late July, with the same service now offered to Australian viewers in a subscription package that will [...]